354 ON THE BAGSHOT BEDS OE THE LONDON BASIN. 



Discussion. 



Prof. Prestwich said it was forty years since the opening of a 

 railway-cutting had first given us some idea of the position of these 

 sands. The paper was a very careful record of observations. The 

 fossils were so imperfect that comparison with the representatives of 

 this series in Hampshire was very difficult. He himself had found but 

 few. He thought that the so-called Upper Bagshots of that region 

 were on the whole more probably synchronous with the Brackles- 

 ham. The occurrence of a little green sand was not of much impor- 

 tance, except that it sometimes was associated with occurrence of 

 fossils. He asked how many species Mr. Monckton had found. 



Mr. J. S. Gardner said that he thought Mr. Monckton had made 

 a sufficiently large collection to show that the beds were really 

 equivalents of the Barton Beds. As for the lower beds, they were 

 probably freshwater, but might perhaps rather belong to the lower 

 part of the Middle Bagshot than to the Lower Bagshot. 



Prof. Judd thought that the author had brought valuable evidence 

 as to the age of the " Upper Bagshots " of the London basin, showing 

 that they might be correlated with some parts of the Barton series. 

 It was important to have shown that these beds did not agree with 

 the Hordwell Beds or Headon-Hill Sands. There was, indeed, no 

 reason for correlating the two series in the Hampshire and Bagshot 

 areas. For himself he thought it was unsafe to attempt to draw 

 exact parallels between beds sixty miles apart, so far as the minor 

 members were concerned. 



Prof. Prestwich mentioned that he had found near Cooper's Hill 

 traces of casts of marine shells in Lower Bagshot. 



Mr. Monckton acknowledged the favourable way in which his 

 paper had been received. He had obtained from the Upper Bagshot 

 28 species, and from the green-sand bed 18 species. It was easier 

 to enumerate than to name the species. 



